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Filmmaker Kevin Smith says Clerks III isn't happening, but he might revive the script as a comic book. Once upon a time, Kevin Smith was just another aspiring writer-director trying to get a movie made despite having no money or connections. The movie that arose from Smith's dogged efforts, the 1994 indie comedy Clerks, would become an iconic low-budget film and catapult Smith to fame and relative fortune.

In 2006, Smith would revisit Clerks for the sequel Clerks II, bringing back the same characters who populated the New Jersey convenience store depicted in the original. Smith's intention was to make Clerks into a trilogy with Clerks III, a movie that was to be so grand, Smith described it as his own personal Cinema Paradiso. Alas, it seems now Smith's trilogy plan will never come to fruition.

Speaking during a recent Fat Man on Batman Q&A, Smith conveyed the bad news that Clerks III will not happen (via Comic Book). As the filmmaker explained, he was all ready to go on the movie when one key actor - Jeff Anderson aka Randal - decided to back out, causing the whole thing to come crashing down. Smith said:

“For a while, one of the clerks did not want to be involved. I wrote the script, he dug the script, he was just like, ‘Yeah, don’t wanna do it.’ It took me years to get him to a place where, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll do this.’ And then it looked like we were moving forward. We had loot for it. $8 million. That was the budget.”

As for the possibility of doing the movie without Anderson as Randal, Smith said that too is a no-go:

“I want it so badly but I can’t do it without him, it was written for him. But the Randal part is the whole movie, like it’s Randal’s flick. So unless he changes his mind — if and when he changes his mind, I doubt that’ll happen — then we can kind of move forward. I could never recast it, he is Randal, Jeff Anderson.”

Though Clerks III will seemingly never happen as a movie because of Anderson's refusal to appear, Smith said he could revive the script as a comic book. Lately, Smith has seen himself branching out into other media a lot, as movie projects apparently become harder for him to get off the ground. Last year for instance Smith talked about making anotherJay and Silent Bob movie, which would see the stoner pair traveling to Hollywood to prevent a reboot of Bluntman and Chronic. But instead of making a movie, Smith and Jason Mewes will bring Jay and Silent Bob back as part of a VR series. Of course, the stoners did recently manage to make it back to screens in another forum altogether, appearing in a cameo on The Flash.

As of now, it appears Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse has come undone, at least in terms of movies. Clerks III won't happen, Jay and Silent Bob the Reboot seems to have evaporated and with Ben Affleck and Smith apparently on the outs, Dogma II almost certainly will never happen either. As for that Mallrats sequel Smith wanted to make called Mallbrats? That one seemingly has died too, but you likely won't see many people crying about it.